Popular Posts

Monday, 6 August 2018

Was the Assad Regime the Victim of the Syrian Revolution or its Creator?

In this chapter I will illustrate in facts what
I called in the preface the “mysterious behavior of the Assad regime” during
the Syrian crisis. . I will list 10 facts as examples of this ambiguous
behavior and describe them briefly.

This behavior was explained by the stream media
as merely “stupidity” or “the expected reaction of a dictator trying to
maintain his position”. Obviously, I don’t agree with this.

This part is about FACTS, no theory here. I
witnessed these facts first hand and added -when possible- references from
various trusted sources. However, I would appreciate if the reader went even
further and investigated these facts from other sources they might trust more.

My own theory to explain this behavior will
come in a later essay. That explanation is my own. The reader can contradict
it. No facts there. However, I will also use several outside sources to support
it.

***

While thousands of foreign fighters
were flooding into Syria, the Syrian regime’s army was working at full capacity
to destroy Syrian cities one by one[1].
This didn’t change when the Russian air forces took over part of the destroying
operation[2].
The fighters were crossing the Syrian borders on a daily basis, armed with tons
of weapons and vehicles. They came mainly from the Turkish borders and
partially from Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. In almost no cases were the fighters’
convoys attacked. They were moving in plain sight, without challenge. Neither
the Syrian regime’s nor the Russians’ air forces tried to stop them.

Further, and Soon after
the rebellion started, the regime released thousands of arrested radicals who
were detained in the famous prisons Sednaya and Palmira[3].These prisons were described as “labs for
manufacturing the terrorists”.

General Khaled Al
Mutlak, a defected Syrian officer, wrote in a very informative article:

“Sednaya prison has been and still is a labor for the
Syrian regime intelligence service agencies. It produces personalities who are
against the regime, who are suspected of terrorism and who became, upon their
release, the main tools in achieving the goals of the Assad regime. […] They
took command positions of the factions which were described as Islamist, with
full support from Arabic and International Intelligence Agencies.”[4]

General Mutlak named some examples
of these figures like:

·Abu Lokman, one
of the founders of the Al Nusra front in Syria, who also worked as ISIS Leader
(Emir) in Al Raqqa [North Syria, and the capital of ISIS in Syria]

“‘The reason the regime released
them at the beginning of the Syrian revolution was to complete the
militarization of the uprising,’ said Naser, who defected in late 2012. ‘And to
spur criminal acts so that revolution would become a criminal case and give the
impression that the regime is fighting terrorists’ […] John Kerry, the outgoing
secretary of state, said in November 2015 that ISIS ‘was created by Assad’ and
by former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, both of whom released al Qaeda
prisoners in their respective countries. Assad’s aim was to tell the world,
‘It’s me or the terrorists.’”[5]

Most analysts, opposition thinkers and writers agree with this analysis.

My objection to this
simple explanation is: the Assad regime achieved this goal within the first two
years. There is a big question mark hovering over this. By 2013 Isis occupied
large parts of Syria and Iraq. With the news dominating international media and
Syrians fed up with the Islamists and foreign factions, the Assad regime had
the justification it needed to end the armed rebellion and restore its control
over Syria. As I will explain in the following points, the Assad regime did the
exact opposite.

The different headquarters of the
armed opposition stayed unmolested during the seven years of the militarized
rebellion. Armed rebels grew in number in each small town or city center across
the area controlled by the opposition. The factions of this opposition, led now
by unknown foreigner fighters, occupied government buildings and schools and turned them into
military buildings. These headquarters were always surrounded with armed
vehicles. They were completely visible and could be easily monitored and
observed. The Syrian and Russian aircraft were flying over these headquarters
on a daily basis while their raids attacked the civilian hospitals, markets,
childrens’ schools and houses[6].
Neither the Syrian aircraft and later the Russian ones tried to bother the
headquarters of the armed opposition. They even avoided causing any harm to
them.

In many events, the tanks of the
opposition were marching peacefully towards their destination without any
attack, or even fear of the attack.

One of the most illustrative
examples was when;

“An entire
1,000-strong rebel brigade based in Syria’s Idlib province has reportedly
defected to the Islamic State group […] The Dawud Brigade, which was based in
Sarmin and fell under the umbrella of the anti-government Sham Army, arrived in
the northeastern city of Raqqa last weekend, the main headquarters for the
Islamic State (IS) – previously known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria[7]
(ISIS/ISIL). [The distance between Sarmin and Raqqa is over 200 Km, plain land,
during that time the Syrian airplanes were flying and attacking the civilians
not so far[8]]
The rebel group arrived in a convoy of over 100 vehicles, including 10 tanks
seized from Syrian government forces.[9]

This actually poses two questions,
not just one.

First, why were these convoys not
bothered by the Russian and Syrian airplanes? In some cases these airplanes
were attacking hospitals and civilian markets, while flying over these moving
tanks.

The second question mark is even
bigger: where did this trust and serenity of the opposition tanks came from?
Where did they get the assurance that they wouldn’t be attacked, so they didn't
even try to hide?

On the other hand, the Assad’s regime was keen to arrest or kill
peaceful activists and publicly insult the intellectuals and the elders[10] in
many targeted areas. During the eight year revolution, the arrest of innocents,
women, children and peaceful activists didn’t stop. They were tortured and
degraded[11] in
horrible ways. This became a phenomena represented by thousands of cases, many
of which were leaked and documented.

In many cases, the arrested or
tortured were merely neutral innocents or even pro regime citizens.

Many thinkers explained this
behavior of the regime as a tactic to militarize the revolution. According to
them, the peaceful revolution was dangerous to the regime and scared it because
of the potential for regime collapse. This explanation sounds logical to some
extent. However, this behavior of the regime continued even after the
revolution was deeply militarized, Islamized and even globalized. The regime
got enough indications and proof of radical and armed rebellion in the first
year of the revolution. That could be enough justification to suppress the
rebellion. So why didn’t this unjustified brutality stop during the eight years
of the revolution?

The regime has been
clearly and systematically encouraging the armed movements, while brutally suppressing
any peaceful activities.

At the start of the rebellion, the rebels obtained most
of their weapons from the Syrian regime itself. The Assad regime’s officers
sold the rebels everything they needed. This initially appeared as mere
corruption. However, anyone who has a basic knowledge of Syrian affairs will
know that it is impossible for such a thing to happen without a green light
from the central command of the Assad regime’s intelligence services. The risk
is very high and the discovery of such deals is almost certain. No sane officer
would risk so much for a few thousand bucks. This could mean an eternity in
hell for the officer, their families and even their clans. After the Hama
Massacre in 1982, no Syrian would have had the courage to sell a cigarette to
someone fighting against the regime. Even just speaking to some suspected
person was a crime, let alone selling weapons. When such deals start to take
place on a regular basis, under similar conditions across the whole country,
that cannot be accidental. This is a systematic process, with full consent from
the high central command of the Assad regime’s intelligence agencies[12]. Most of these officers who committed such deals moved to areas
controlled by the regime, where they would live for many years. None of them
were investigated or punished for these deals.

Also the Telegraph report about the
same issue: “Sednaya Prison, northeast of Damascus, Syria. Thousands of
political prisoners have been held here by President Assad's regime, and it is
well attested that President Bashar al-Assad ran hot and cold on jihadists
throughout his reign. He encouraged them to go to Iraq to join Zarqawi’s
al-Qaeda offshoot, the predecessor to Isil, and fight America after 2003, but
also jailed many on their return home if they seemed to pose a similar threat
to his own rule. When the uprising in Syria began in spring 2011, he released
hundreds of them under an amnesty. The amnesty, supposedly for political
prisoners, was denounced at the time as a fraud, or too little too late. In
fact, it was one of the most important political acts Mr. Assad made. The
prisoners released were mostly Islamists, who went on to join or form a string
of armed groups, while secular and peaceful protesters and activists continued
to be jailed and killed.” http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/isis-jihad-syria-assad-islamic/

[4]https://www.syria.tv/content/مختبرات-ترويض-الإرهاب . Mutlak thinks that “the story of manufacturing and preparing
those persons among others started on 2005. The Syrian Intelligence agencies
implemented a practical training program to prepare Jihadist Islamists and
civilians who have been qualified as a part of a bigger test of internal
expected conflict. The place of this test was Sydnaya prison where the prison
was gradually handed to the Islamists prisoners starting from the first
intractableness (27 March 2009), then the second one (5 June 2008)”.

[7] The
exact scene was also seen in the battle of liberating Idlib city center in the
north of Syria. The convoys of opposition tanks were marching gloriously
towards the City Center under the sun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ71KXgNAU4. On
that day, the Syrian aircrafts attacked Sarmin city, which is 3 Km away from
Idlib. These attacks killed many civilians and caused a lot of damage to the
central market, hospitals, and children schools in Sarmin and its countryside!
“On March 28, 2015, a coalition of Islamist rebel groups including Ahrar
al-Sham and jihadists from the Al-Nusra Front, now known as Fatah al-Sham
Front, seized the Sunni-majority city. […] Syrian warplanes, and later Russian
jets, have repeatedly targeted cities and towns in Idlib province.”

Read also in the same report:
“Brigade’s leader [was] Hassan Abound [which is also ex-Sydney prisoner who was
freed by the Syrian regime 2011]

“Meanwhile there have been reports
on Monday that several rebel factions affiliated with the FSA have pledged
allegiance to the IS in the border town of al-Bokmal in eastern Syria. […] The
reports of the defections come as the Obama administration ratchets up efforts
to arm the Free Syrian Army. Last month the White House asked Congress for
half-a-billion dollars in aid to go towards the opposition fighters.”

[10]As I
promised the reader, I will postpone my own explanation of the events to the
next essay, and keep this essay for facts only. However, I would take this
opportunity to wonder here if the above described behavior of Assad’s regime
has anything to do with an exact similar behavior somewhere else in this world,
namely in Pakistan as James Risen reported in his exceptional book “Pay Any
Price”:

“On March 17,
2011, American drones fired at least two missiles into a gathering in Data Khel
that killed more than forty people. The U.S. government insisted that the drone
strike killed a Taliban commander, but villagers later told investigators that
drones had attacked a meeting of a local elders gathered to negotiate a dispute
over a chromite mine. Many of those killed were men who were both local elders
and heads of large families. Their deaths triggered yet another round of
anti-American protest in Pakistan.” Pay Any Price, James Risen, PP 2015,
P 55.

[12]In one of the inspection campaign processed by Assad Regime against
Saraqib, my town, the soldiers caught an armed leader from the opposition. The
soldiers called the high command happily to inform them of the siege. The
brutal furious answer came from their command: Release him, you bastards.